The X-Files (Page 4 of 7)

Disney bought the movie studio but FOX Network I believe is still separate, as is News Corp.

Ooh. Maybe they can boot Chris Carter like George Lucas!

The X-Files is a great frame. If I were in charge, I would bring in a showrunner to at least co-run the show with Carter. An equal voice who could not be overruled. If Carter didn't like that, he could leave. Because he can't do the job.

I would keep the known writers, but I would also fill out the writers room (which I'd actually have) with new writers. A lot of writers today grew up with The X-Files and know the tone of the show and what works. Let them work on it. I'd get rid of the Mulder and Scully clone agents that are on the new show, but bring in some new agents who could carry the show. Make Mulder a mentor or a source that they go to from time to time, but not the star of the show. We can't keep one foot in and one foot out like that. Maybe Skinner can stay.

New mythology too.

Hard to say. The X-Files is a known name that could make money. It also isn't super edgy or offensive (except for some bad writing), so I could see it being reworked. I could see some less marketable titles being tossed and forgotten though.

I hate this whole deal.

I really enjoyed "This," but it wasn't an episode of THE X-FILES as generally defined. Which is to say -- the average episode of THE X-FILES has Mulder and Scully being passive investigators in a world beyond human understanding or control. "This" shows Mulder and Scully as action heroes pursuing the conspiracy to stop it rather than investigating to uncover it and they're much more combat-proficient than ever. It's at odds with the majority of other episodes.

One in-universe possibility: the onscreen events of "This" could be a simulation.

The simulated Langley tells Mulder and Scully that he exists in a world of perfection in which all his wants and desires are met, but the artificiality has become maddening for him while Erica Price declares that few if any of the digital personalities ever discover their artificial existence.

When Mulder and Scully are in the bar and narrowing down their investigation, the lighting around them darkens and dims to show them alone in shadow; neither of them react or seem to notice and it creates the sense that the world around them is a computer generated construct that's experiencing a service interruption.

There are also a number of errors throughout the episode that are clearly deliberate: Mulder refers to the National Security Agency as the NSI. Byers' headstone has a mis-spelled middle name, an error that writer/director Glen Morgan (the co-creator of the Lone Gunmen) would not make.

There is no explanation for how Langly created a cemetery based puzzle for a grave he didn't know he'd be buried in. At one point, Mulder is pretending to be handcuffed but raises his unbound hands in full view of a guard; it goes unnoticed.

The existence of a backup, unremarked upon until the final scene, is inexplicably never raised before then.

Then there's Mulder and Scully's close relationship in "This." In "My Struggle II," Mulder didn't bother to call Scully or answer her when heading off to confront the Smoking Man. Previous episodes had shown him saddened by their breakup and withholding his feelings about William from her.

But "This" shows Mulder and Scully falling asleep on the sofa together and Scully refers to Mulder's house as "our home." And then there's Mulder and Scully as seemingly invincible action stars.

Noticeably -- the conceit that the digital personalities only go online when the real person has died doesn't make sense. There is no reason why the simulation and the real-world person could not co-exist.

However, it's possible that the actual meaning is: the simulation only permits one instance of the digital personality at any given time to avoid conflicts and redundant processes, and the backups of the personalities are only activated if the current iteration is erased or otherwise ceases to function. Furthermore, the simulations may exist in sandboxed situations in multiple planes of digital reality.

Is any of "This" actually happening? Or is it a digital dreamworld in which the simulated Mulder and Scully were given an existence in which their fondest desire -- a romantic relationship with endless cases to investigate together and forever -- was granted with reality bending at the seams in order to give them what they want? The fact that William is missing and the Lone Gunmen are still dead in their perfect world indicates that their greatest wish is to be with each other without anyone else in the way -- which is selfish but human.

...

Moving on. "This" is an episode where Mulder and Scully are targeted by a technological phenomenon and act as action heroes in a sci-fi adventure as they go on the run from the authorities, storm the citadel of the conspiracy using subterfuge, weapons, deception and total confidence in their ability to topple any physical threat. It's strange because in the first nine seasons and two films, Mulder and Scully were hardly ever in combat situations and when they were, their attitude was generally to flee in terror from bees and choppers and tanks and gunmen.

They were regularly overpowered, beaten up, shot, pummelled, knocked out and tied up. "This" has Mulder and Scully sliding across floors, punching out assassins, shooting down enemies and Mulder, whose defining attribute in Seasons 1 - 7 was to regularly drop his gun, is suddenly a capable marksman whose uncharacteristic profiency in "My Struggle II" with defeating a thug has become the new normal.

Admittedly, there is a huge time gap between Seasons 9 and I WANT TO BELIEVE during which Mulder and Scully were fugitives and conceivably spent a lot of time retraining themselves for their lives on the run. But the structure of "This" is most unlike THE X-FILES: Mulder and Scully are the focus and the protagonists, and their abilities are well above what's been previously established.

And yet, this is actually very much in tune with how THE X-FILES worked in Seasons 1 - 9. It was a different era of TV where viewers were unlikely and unable to watch every single episode. Chris Carter, as a showrunner, rarely rewrote scripts the way modern lead producers do. Instead, his attitude was to invite each individual writer to produce their scripts from writing to airing and he encouraged each individual writer to present their unique, personal vision of THE X-FILES.

For example, Chris Carter generally writes Mulder as a stalwart hero with a meaningful purpose and mission, but Darin Morgan ("Were Monster") writes Mulder as dysfunctional and fundamentally hopeless in his goals. Chris Carter wrote aliens as unknowable, inhuman monsters of horror and madness; James Wong wrote aliens as figures of unimaginable wonder and beauty.

Vince Gilligan wrote monsters as troubled representations of the dark side of humanity which could be confronted and defeated; Chris Carter wrote monsters as beyond human understanding or control. And Chris Carter writes Mulder and Scully as passive investigators, but Glen Morgan writes them as involved action heroes. So, "This" being nothing like the other episodes of THE X-FILES is actually being quite true to THE X-FILES.

This conflicting, contradictory approach is also within Chris Carter's own episodes: he writes monster of the week episodes that are clearly set in a universe of supernatural, magical, unknowable forces, but his alien episodes are written in a universe of scientific and technological concepts in which voodoo and ghosts don't fit. His Season 1 - 9 myth-arc episodes are about aliens as a terrifying force outside humanity infiltrating our civilization and infecting it with savagery and monstrosity; his Season 10 - 11 myth-arc episodes are about humans who have co-opted the wonder and beauty of benign aliens to take advantage of humanity's weaknesses and failings. Alien colonization and the Spartan Virus are two different conspiracies; Carter treats them as the same conspiracy (aside from two lines in "My Struggle III" where the conspirator says that the aliens are not going to colonize Earth as the planet's no longer worth their while).

This is why continuity both for the myth-arc and for the characters has always been a pointless waste of time in this show. THE X-FILES was written in the 90s where episodes were written as self-directing, standalone products without much concern for what aired last week or what would air next week. This was true of both the writers and the majority of the audience and Carter has maintained this approach for Seasons 10 - 11.

Looking at "This" independently as it was meant to be seen: it's clearly about establishing Mulder and Scully as a couple with the plot being at best an afterthought, a framework to put Mulder and Scully together in every scene with the entire episode never showing them apart at all. They are a pair who are so comfortable with each other that they fall asleep on the sofa watching television, reviewing casefiles and eating junk food. They are so familiar that even as fugitives pursued by assassins, they are cheerily at ease with each other in the woods or in parking lots or in a cafe or in a restaurant or on a bus. They are so acclimated that Scully refers to Mulder's house as "home." They are so warm with each other that they can both silently decide not to bother cleaning up the house and will silently let rubbish fall to the floor and head back to the sofa where they were when the episode began.

These are not coworkers or colleagues; THE X-FILES (this week) is a love story about two people who are uniquely and intimately suited to each other to the point where their marital status and professional standing are completely irrelevant because they are a team, they are a couple, they are together and they are completely infatuated with each other and their lives. God knows what they'll be like next week, but this is what they're like in "This." It's how Glen Morgan sees them. It may not be how the other writers see them.

If you look at it from a continuity minded standpoint -- which is not how THE X-FILES was designed -- you may see an arc. In Seasons 1 - 6, Mulder and Scully went from colleagues who trusted each other to best friends and comrades to the point where even when they'd been reassigned and the X-Files office was closed or kept from them, they would investigate cases in their spare time together to the point where "Dreamland" essentially has them as a sexless couple going to Area 51 and "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" show them spending their holidays staking out a haunted house as civilians instead of FBI agents. In Season 7, they kissed on New Year's Eve but it went no further and the Smoking Man remarked to Scully: "You'd die for Mulder, but you won't allow yourself to love him." The episode "all things" revealed that Scully had an affair with her professor in her college years that left her feeling that love was somehow a betrayal of indepedence but finally making her peace with that; the teaser and tag scene suggested that Mulder and Scully had finally consummated their relationship.

"Hollywood AD" and "Je Souhaite" showed Mulder and Scully distinctly romantic with each other, "Requiem" had Scully overjoyed to discover she was pregnant, the Season 8 finale had Scully holding her baby and Mulder kissing her and "The Truth" has them running away together. However, I WANT TO BELIEVE shows Mulder and Scully in conflict with the chemistry of a long-divorced couple reluctantly adjusted to how they'll never be rid of each other. "My Struggle I" showed them separated with Scully calling a relationship with Mulder "quite impossible" and Mulder sadly but gently saying that he and Scully had gone their separate ways "for better or for worse" while Scully said to Mulder, "I'm always happy to see you," establishing them as amicably broken up and maintaining constant contact.

However, their relationship starts to get closer. "Home Again" has Scully confiding in Mulder that she longs desperately to see William; "Founders Mutation" has Mulder claiming he has had to forget William but later revealing that he hasn't at all. "Babylon" has Scully getting over the death of her mother and then this reinvigorated Scully visits Mulder at his house and they're holding hands and walking joyfully at the end. They have only one scene together in "My Struggle II" and they have brief interaction in "My Struggle III," but "This" would suggest that after "Babylon," Mulder and Scully have become a couple again. Scully called Mulder's house "our home."

Or the next episode will resume having them living in separate dwellings and only seeing each other at the office and, retroactively, "This" was a late night work session that became movies and snacking and it was an anomaly, not a regularity. Who knows what the next episode will be? You never know what THE X-FILES is from week to week -- that's the show. It could just as easily be argued that the romantic episodes of Season 7 were simply those writers' personal visions of the Mulder/Scully relationship which exist alongside episodes in which they're platonically friendly or professionally amicable. It's almost like each episode of THE X-FILES is set in a different parallel universe.

For better or for worse, THE X-FILES is not really a series as we understand it today; it's an anthology show that features the same actors playing characters with the same names and jobs but with relationships and settings that are radically different from episode to episode and writer to writer with little to no concern for ongoing development or consistency and continuity.

"This" may be the first episode to actually silo its own episode from the rest of the series by proposing that the onscreen are all a simulation -- and it may even explain why Mulder and Scully are so different from week to week, why the conspiracy was in Seasons 1- 9 about an invasion but in Season 10 became population control without alien involvement, why THE X-FILES goes back and forth from sci-fi to supernatural -- these are all different versions of the simulation.

This week actually... Didn't suck. I'm surprised.

If they cut out the relationship crap that always kills the Mulder/Scully dynamic, this would have felt like a classic X-Files episode.

Also, the Trump jabs. It's just petty. And at this point in the series, the FBI has been proven to be horribly corrupt and possibly genocidal, so shutting them down would probably not be the worst idea.

Glen Morgan sees them as a couple. Chris Carter sees them as colleagues and friends, but he doesn't see them as husband and wife or boyfriend and girlfriend because he feels that is too conventional for them. Darin Morgan sees them as amicably broken up but still good friends. James Wong sees them as wisecracking coworkers.

And THE X-FILES isn't really about continuity, so each writer writes their own individual version of Mulder and Scully and Carter doesn't force them to conform, instead encouraging each episode to represent the author's vision even when it contradicts what was onscreen last week and what will air next week.

There are times when THE X-FILES' anthology approach is quite maddening and infuriating -- specifically with the myth-arc episodes trying to tell an epic story with numerous pieces that don't fit together and lacking much effort to at least make them feel like they're part of the same show. I have very mixed feelings about the non-existent script editing except to say it often drives a lot of people crazy and makes them stop watching the show, and that it's very unusual in a TV landscape of serialization.

It is admirable, however, that Chris Carter has one view of Mulder and Scully -- but declines to insist that his writers follow it, instead telling them to pursue their vision and passions on his show. He could rewrite them. He could mandate that they revise their romcoms and amiable exes attitude and have them replace it with Carter's preference for platonic intimacy. But he doesn't. And he won't. He wants his writers to write their stories, not Chris Carter's stories.

This in no way addresses Informant's criticisms except to say: because Carter encouraged each writer to do their own version of the show, produce their scripts and direct their episodes, Vince Gilligan created Breaking Bad, Howard Gordon helped create Homeland, David Greenwalt led Angel, Tim Minear produced Wonderfalls, Darin Morgan gave Fringe its weirdness -- and Carter nourished and encouraged all these writers and their voices and talents and gave them experience to produce and sell other shows -- although none ever ran their writing rooms the way Carter (doesn't) run his. Nearly every X-FILES writer has gone onto huge success and acclaim.

I think the decision to give each writer has his own personal X-FILES universe was a good approach in the 90s. The casual viewer, which was most of the viewers, wouldn't be particularly aware of the inconsistencies because the majority of the audience wouldn't have seen all the episodes.

For viewers with at best Slider_Quinn21 level memories of the show, aliens being malevolent monsters in Carter episodes but innocent and benign in a Morgan/Wong episode could be part of the mystery. Scully having a dog in Darin Morgan episodes but making no reference to her pet in any other episodes would go unnoticed. Scully could lose a child in one episode and be back to normal next week.

This was TV before DVD sets and viewing on demand; only a small percentage of the viewers were going to be rewatching homemade or official VHS cassettes or marathoning reruns in syndication. Carter's hands-off style has fallen out of vogue in a modern era where serialization is now possible and effective thanks to streaming and each episode is part of a greater whole.

Carter's approach has not translated well to the modern era, but I can appreciate his wish to keep the anthology approach for the revival.

**

Chris Carter and Informant are actually in total agreement on Mulder and Scully's romance. Carter didn't want to have one, never has and still doesn't. It annoys him greatly. When first casting Dana Scully, FOX urged him to cast Pamela Anderson. This drove Carter crazy and he fought hard to have a real actress who could play a scientist, a doctor and an FBI agent.

Part of his distaste for hiring an lead actress simply to objectify her is present in the pilot where Scully, thinking she's found alien implant marks, runs into Mulder's hotel room and strips for him to examine her. Carter's script and Duchovny's performance are very determinedly sexless as Mulder recognizes the marks as mosquito bites, and the moment leads to Mulder sharing his traumatic childhood with Scully.

It's pretty clear from the Pilot that Carter wanted to explore Mulder and Scully as platonic friends and partners with a depth of connection well beyond just boyfriend/girlfriend. He wanted to focus on the conflict between the believer and the skeptic and romance was not his area of interest. Also, THE X-FILES wasn't really about relationships anyway; it was about scary stories, monsters of the week and two characters who would be static and unchanging, more icons than people.

However, something strange happened: there was a peculiar romantic chemistry between Duchovny and Anderson that Carter did not want, did not plan for and couldn't understand. Carter was mystified. Duchovny and Anderson did not get along well at all; Duchovny was a studied, serious, thoughtful, nerdy, restrained thespian. Anderson was a hyperactive punk rocker. They chafed against each other. Neither enjoyed Vancouver, both expected THE X-FILES to be cancelled inside six weeks, both were astonished by the success and the renewal and the increasing horror that they were totally mismatched to each other and would never be rid of each other. Carter wanted to put them in couples' counselling after Season 1 and it baffled him that onscreen, Mulder and Scully had a chemistry that the audience viewed as romantic.

He refused to acknowledge it for a long time and wrote against it. However, the other writers resisted him and Carter, being laid back with his writers, allowed them to write scripts which played up the romance. Most notable was Darin Morgan's "War of the Coprophages" in which Scully refuses to leave her apartment despite Mulder's tales of killer cockroaches -- until she hears that Mulder has met a lady scientist who finds his theories intriguing, then suddenly Scully's hauling ass to catch up with him.

Then came the movie where Carter, accepting that the audience wanted a romance, had a near-kiss between Mulder and Scully. And with the move to Los Angeles and Season 6, Carter found himself struggling to maintain THE X-FILES' originality when five years of monsters of the week had exhausted all the obvious stories.

The writing staff suggested they liven up the show by having a run of romantic comedy episodes. Duchovny and Anderson also pushed for this. Carter conceded that they needed the fresh material that this would bring, but mandated they could only bait the fans with teases and never allow the romance to actually come to fruition.

So we had Mulder kissing a Scully doppelganger in "Triangle" and telling the real Scully he loved her only to be dismissed, "Rain King" where Scully expresses her love for Mulder unknowingly, "Arcadia" where the go undercover as a married couple.

But then came Season 7 where Gillian Anderson effectively overruled him and wrote and directed "all things" where Mulder and Scully finally become a couple. Carter insisted on maintaining deniability where the romance is largely offscreen and indicated only through Mulder and Scully being in really good moods, but then decided to use Scully getting pregnant as a season-ending cliffhanger. Season 8 ended with Mulder and Scully kissing and holding their baby, a final scene that sadly wasn't final.The showrunner had effectively been defeated on this front by his writers, the fans and also the actress.

The romance wasn't something Carter wanted, but as it became a selling point and the series' longevity extended well beyond the five seasons Carter had expected, he gave in and he wasn't happy about it.

The Season 9 finale, "The Truth," has Scully losing all credibility in court as a witness to the alien conspiracy because her romance with Mulder has undermined her as a scientist. This was Carter's grim observation that Mulder and Scully as a couple instantly reduced Scully to Mulder's love interest. In "My Struggle I," he broke them up immediately, but due to the actors' insistence, he was forced to script them as reconnecting again by "Babylon."

It exasperates him, but Carter has grudgingly accepted that the characters he created have shifted due to the actors playing them and what ended up onscreen wasn't what he'd conceived or scripted in the beginning.

I don't really have an opinion on the Mulder and Scully romance except to say: I see lots of storytelling potential with them as lovers and I see just as much with them as platonic partners.

I'm not opposed to the idea of romantic pairings in general, but I think that they sometimes happen less because the characters demand it, and more because the audience (and writers) expect it. It's not just true with Mulder and Scully, it's also true with Oliver and Felicity, and I'm sure it's true with many more characters on screen that I'm too lazy to think of right now.

Mulder and Scully are, in a lot of ways, like Sam and Dean Winchester. They didn't choose to be together, but once they are together, they have a strong bond and partnership. Some in the fan community view this as sexual (do not Google the word Wincest, I warn you), but the truth is that it's not. There's a need for a lot of people to sexualize relationships where people have chemistry, but sometime you have to recognize where that chemistry comes from.

Mulder and Scully were never a couple where you expected them to fall into some frenzied makeout session at any moment. Their dynamic was based on the fact that they push off of each other, not the fact that they're drawn toward each other. It's a strong partnership, but not romance. Mulder and Scully should be the partners with absolutely zero chance of being sexually involved, who can grab a beer and complain about their actual spouses (if they had them). They should be a safe zone for each other, and for the audience, in an otherwise incredibly dangerous world that they live in. Being romantically linked creates drama between them that shouldn't exist. And rather than have a pretty unique relationship that we don't often see on TV, they become like every other man and woman who appear on screen together on every show.

What has their romantic pairing added to the show? The best part of "Plus One" was the push and pull that reminded me of the earlier X-Files episodes. He'd make some sexual innuendo that was totally safe because there was zero chance of it happening, and she'd rebut with some sharp comeback.
The romantic pairing has given us an awkward relationship between the characters, because they can't be the partners that they once were, but they also kinda need to be the partners that they once were, because it's the premise of the show. There's always this random, useless element sitting between them in every scene now.
And what else has the pairing given us? William? Even though the story could have been done in other ways, it just went nowhere. He's some vaguely powerful person who has had not much of an impact on the show at all.

People think that having two characters fall in love will cement their bond and make the whole thing that much stronger, but that's not always the case. It's important to recognize when two characters shouldn't go there, and I think the X-Files is one of those cases. Rather than bring the characters together, the sexualization of that relationship has created division between them, and an awkwardness. The safe zone (friend zone?) is gone, and where do they go from here?

I agree that the execution of the romance was poorly handled. If they were going to go there, they should have just gone there. However, I don't think that putting them together was ever going to turn out well for the series. A married couple with children, who are partners in some oddball FBI division, sharing a one-desk office in the basement, and hunting monsters? It sounds like a premise that might work if we're talking about a small town sheriff's department, or a PI firm, but it just looks silly when it's the FBI.

Yeah, I'm a writer, and I'm supposed to be able to envision all of the potential routes that a story could take. However, there is usually a path of least resistance, where the story naturally wants to go. If you ignore that and force it to go in another direction, the story feels wrong. I think that's what happened here. The story wasn't properly executed because there was no proper execution.

To me, watching Mulder and Scully kiss is like watching Sam and Dean kiss, or Buffy and Giles. It doesn't make me all warm inside, it makes me a little grossed out. They have a huge amount of chemistry and a strong relationship... but she's more like the sister that he never had a chance to have than she is the woman that he wants to make wild, passionate love to.

I really enjoyed the episode.  The quirky X-Files stuff tends to do it for me -- I think David does that humor especially well, and Gillian provides great contrast.

Setting aside all the political commentary, I don't think there's any doubt that Darin Morgan is skewering, mocking, criticizing and ultimately debunking Chris Carter's approach to the myth-arc whether it's Colonization, the Spartan Virus or William's true parentage. Carter has always permitted his writing staff to make fun of him with his blessing.

"Forehead Sweat" is composed entirely of people standing around talking in ominous foreshadowing, teasing grand payoffs that only come in the form of very sad anti-climaxes. Reggie Something offers a secret history behind the world we know only for his grand revelations to be exposed as a delusion. Dr. They is a silly figure of absurdity whose every statement underscores not a word should be taken seriously.

In addition, all the clues regarding Reggie's identity are contradictory and nonsensical: his ID appeared in the digitized X-Files records in "This" and Skinner recognizes him, he's being pursued by FBI agents and henchmen -- except given Scully's revelations, Reggie shouldn't be known to anyone save the orderlies at the Spotnitz Sanitarium.

Every time "Forehead Sweat" provides any sort of master narrative on disparate, disconnected and confusing events, the pieces fail to fit into a cohesive whole and Dr. They points out that there is so much trivia and information and theory that it's impossible to know what's true and what's not anymore.

This has always been the case with THE X-FILES specifically in terms of the alien conspiracy. The pieces have never fit together. Season 1 has the US government executing any and all alien life on sight for which Deep Throat expresses his deep regret -- except Season 2 indicates that aliens have infiltrated every level civilization and formed a shadow government.

Season 3 indicates that aliens are conducting rogue experiments in combining human and alien DNA and they're creating clone upon clone of Samantha, but Season 5 and FIGHT THE FUTURE declare it's actually the Syndicate trying to create an alien human hybrid so that the conspirators can... survive the alien invasion by... what? 
The black oil it its first appearance is merely a 'medium' for an alien life force to transfer its essence into a human host, but in its subsequent appearance, it becomes a virus designed to turn a human into an alien, but then later on, the black oil is in fact an alien life form that possesses and controls humans. What?

The bees are being used to spread the virus to exterminate human victims except the plan as revealed in FIGHT THE FUTURE is to use humans as a slave race, so the bees are for... what again? Season 6 at last explains that the invasion plot is for the black oil aliens to invade Earth and use human bodies as incubators to repopulate the planet with their offspring... so the bees are... what? And the clones are for... what?

THE X-FILES was composed of all these little clues thrown out randomly in separate episodes with a later episode attempting to impose a master narrative upon all these disparate hints except half of them don't fit the overarching story declared afterwards.

If Reggie Something is a delusional mental patient, how could Dr. They be a real person whom Mulder oculd meet? If the endgame of the myth-arc was ultimately the Spartan Virus as a a human-devised means of population control, why was there an alien bounty hunter killing off alien-human conspirators? If the Cigarette Smoking Man plotted his apocalyptic scenario from the start, why was he presented as middle management within the Syndicate in Seasons 1 - 6?

"Forehead Sweat" is noting the sheer futility of trying to make sense of any of this incoherence by deliberately offering a mini-myth-arc with miniature hints that add up to a miniature level of myth-arc meandering that leaves us none the wiser.

I liked it, although at times, I despaired at how long we were spending in that parking lot.

Mulder ranting at the young FBI agents was hilarious to me on account of how Mulder is bragging about his conspiracy credentials when he spent Seasons 1 - 9 investigating a plot to invade Earth that turned out to be a hoax and he failed to ever expose the conspirators at all. It seems to me that aside from being gainfully employed by the FBI for a career spanning three decades (with six years as a federal fugitive and nine years doing nothing), Mulder has no meaningful achievements whatsoever, something Darin Morgan has always been keen to highlight.

One of my favourite X-FILES websites, www.EattheCorn.com, spent almost the entire length of the show documenting the myth-arc across the nine seasons, two films and then the Season 10 & 11 comic books. The webmaster was dismayed when Chris Carter declared the bulk of the myth-arc to be a hoax in “My Struggle,” attempted to reconcile alien colonization with the Spartan Virus in “My Struggle II” and gave up halfway into his review.

With “My Struggle III,” however, Eat the Corn seemed to squeal with delight at two lines of dialogue where Mr. Y declares that he was part of a Syndicate to bring about alien colonization but that it’s not happening due to environmental damage. The webmaster was later gushing on Facebook about how pleased he was that the Season 1 - 9 myth-arc was validated by these two lines. He then suggested a new approach to the myth-arc with Seasons 1 - 9 being genuine but the colonization aborted some time between 2000 and 2012 with the Spartan Virus being a new conspiracy that was devised colonization was cancelled.

I thought it was hilarious how passionate he became over Chris Carter throwing him a bone in this fashion when to me, it was very grudging and dismissive. And, to me, “Forehead Sweat” is a (gentle) way of mocking fans like the Eat the Corn webmaster who are trying to make sense of it all when the people pumping out this information have no concern for sense whatsover.

(But we’re all crazy passionate about silly things; I’m ridiculous with SLIDERS and I think this gentleman is my X-FILES counterpart.)

To me, Dr. They's remark about how we are all deluged in so much information we don't know whether or not to believe anything at all -- it's a comment on the mythology where between Colonization, Sveta, the Spartan Virus and William's parentage, the myth-arc has gone back and forth upon itself so many times that the viewer is completely lost as to what to believe. Dr. They also declares that in this post-conspiracy/post-cover-up era, Mulder search for truth has become irrelevant and Darin Morgan is by extension calling THE X-FILES redundant and out of date.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I think that the myth-arc is most definitely out of touch with modern concerns and Chris Carter's efforts to update it broke continuity and also presented some truly hamfisted and inane storytelling. THE X-FILES no longer works when it's about two FBI agents trying to break open a conspiracy that keeps morphing into a new form that's in stark contradiction to its previous incarnation with an alien invasion becoming a means of population control becoming something about supersoldier infants. Jesus.

But. I think that THE X-FILES is highly effective as a paranormal procedural about a skeptic and an investigator delving into mysteries of a supernatural or science fiction nature in a world that is more or less our own. That's a concept that continued to thrive long after THE X-FILES went off the air. It flourished with FRINGE, it was a success with SUPERNATURAL. Monsters of the week is a good format.

The fixation on the myth-arc has created a lot of bizarre characterization because the show seems uncomfortable with having the characters note that Colonization and the Spartan Virus are two contradictory conspiracies. Mulder confronted the Smoking Man in "My Struggle II" and didn't remark once upon how CGB Spender made him waste at least nine years investigating a phony invasion plot, he later visits Deep Throat's grave and doesn't wonder if Ronald tricked him into believing in Colonization or if he was pawn as well.

THE X-FILES still has value as a paranormal procedural, but the myth-arc is past its sell-by date. I take no pleasure in saying that, however. I understand that a lot of fans have a lot of fondness and devotion to it. I respect that -- I just don't share it.

Oh and BTW, I'm also a little tired of the Trump jabs.  If Fox is so pissed off about Trump, why doesn't he spend his time trying to investigate him?  He's already free, apparently, to do whatever he wants.

I get that Hollywood doesn't love Trump and wants to pat themselves on the back for speaking out to millions of people, but it really dates the show.  He's going to be out of office before we know it, and these little comments are going to look so petty one day.

Well, even putting aside any part of whether or not it's true, it's just a weird thing to put in there.  Because let's assume that Trump *doesn't* shut down the FBI, and let's assume that he either has one term or gets out before one term. 

The jokes are gonna be weird and irrelevant in just a couple of years.  If you tried to watch it in a few years, you'd wonder if you missed some segment of the X-Files where the President was involved.  Because these jokes are really only relevant now.

I think "fake news" and media/government propaganda belongs on the X-Files because they're constantly dealing with misinformation.  Having Mulder say something in one episode or two might be a clever little wink to the audience, but the show is doing it over and over again.  And while they might have something to say now, Trump is a very temporary problem.  It'd be like if every single episode of the Simpsons' first few seasons had a Dan Quayle joke.  It's just weird.

I feel like you guys don't really get THE X-FILES although that could be said of pretty much everyone who has ever written for the show as they were encouraged to do STEPHEN KING's X-FILES/DARIN MORGAN's X-FILES/________'s X-FILES rather than aim for any sort of house style. Across 11 seasons and two films, however, the show has always been set *now*. Not in the past, not in the future, not in a parallel reality -- so the modern day references are how the show has been.

In the 90s, the anxieties were about cyberspace, tobacco, faith healers, the space program, AIDS, human trafficking, Indigenous peoples and government cover-ups. It's part of why the endgame of Colonization always seemed so unbelievable. THE X-FILES is set in our world and it will always have more continuity with reality than with its own episodes. 90s era X-FILES is dated by the fashions and the cell phones, 2015+ X-FILES is dated by its politics and that's every TV show that was ever made.

But it's pretty fair to dislike the jokes if you feel they don't work. That's valid criticism.

I loved seeing Stuart Margolin on screen once again, as a big Rockford Files fan!  The Trump jokes are dumb, but I think they do them because DJT and many of this followers spout all kinds of conspiracies.  Trump promised to released docs from JFK and UFO's, too, which were duds.

This week's episode was weak. It wasn't as horrible as the first two of the season, but it was incredibly weak. It was like they took a typical X-File monster of the week story and tried to turn it into a story about William, and the final product was neither one of those things. It didn't have the weight or care of an episode about William should have, even with the weird scene with Scully crying over his body. They didn't spend enough time getting to the "this is William" side of the story, and the fact that whole thing just came to them, rather than them going to it, made it feel false.

Had they played the angle of Scully finding the file on Mulder's desk, and her suspecting/projecting a William angle over their course of the investigation, the episode could have been really interesting. It didn't even need to be the real William. In fact, it probably shouldn't have been, because turning him into this big X-File creature with super powers prevents him from being an active part of the story in any real way.

Trying to mash these stories together deprived the story of any natural flow. It just didn't work for me.

On another note, what's with Gillian Anderson's voice? I watch her on The Fall and American Gods, and she sounds perfectly normal. However, on The X-Files, she sounds like she's spent the last 15 years living with the Cigarette Smoking Man.

No, I'm an X-Files fan. I started watching the show when the first episode aired, and I have watched it straight through today. Ice rewstched the series. I know the series. I get the series. I know what it's like when it's good, and I know what it's like when it's not. Sorry, but if you watch the series all the way through (including the rather iffy last couple seasons of the original run) and go right I to this revival, it just doesn't feel like it fits (for the most part). "Ghouli" is a halfway good stand-alone episode and a halfway good mythology episode, but ultimately succeeds at being neither. And the lack of proper story construction is perfectly evident in the scene in Mulder's office. The case is introduced as both a normal X-File and as a supernatural message to Scully, when only one of those was needed (probably the supernatural element, because it would echo Scully's previous discovery of her daughter)

A fun experiment might be to go back and watch the introduction of Emily in season 5.

There's another continuity peculiarity -- William was adopted by Wyoming farmers in Season 9. But in Season 11, they're now a wealthy Virginia family. Ah, continuity. Doesn't exist on this show.

Season 8 was very strong as THE X-FILES committed fully to serialization, something it had declined to engage in despite being the first show to attempt an ongoing mythology over multiple episodes and seasons. Season 9 suffered badly because Mulder was inexplicably made the center of the show despite the actor refusing to return and there was also a lot of awkward scripting to include Scully in stories because they had the actress on contract but didn't have anything for her to do.

**

I don't think we need anymore standalones where William is represented through a surrogate (Christian in I WANT TO BELIEVE, the genetically altered children in "Founders Mutation," the trash man monster in "Home Again"). It was time for William to step back into the story and James Wong made it happen albeit in that classic X-FILES fashion of being elusive and always out of reach, much like Samantha and the truth behind the conspiracy.

Personally, I would have preferred William join the cast from this episode onwards. But I've come to accept that the show has a house format (as opposed to style) that isn't ever going to change. It would bother me if not for SUPERNATURAL and FRINGE having pursued the ongoing development that TXF just won't ever do.

It’s funny how THE X-FILES comic books, the SEASON 10 - 11 series, were originally billed as a canonical conitnuation of the series. Chris Carter, who did little more than read the comic book scripts, had his name put on the covers. The publisher understood that Carter’s name at the top of the credits lent the comics a credibility among fans that was instantly lost the second THE X-FILES was announced as returning to TV.

SEASON 11 ends with Mulder confronting an alien ship that warps spacetime in order to traverse great distances. A rip in reality shows glimpses of parallel universes — one of which shows Mulder and Scully in their “My Struggle” outfits: Mulder with his sunglasses and green jacket, Scully with her parted down the center hair. The implication was that SEASONS 10 - 11 were in a parallel universe to the Revival — except that given the Revival’s liberties with the myth-arc and continuity, the actual effect upon readers (or at least me) was that the comics were canon and it was the Revival that was set in a parallel universe to the original TV show.

The televised Season 11 seems determined to pepper every episode with the theme of alternate realities whether they are visions (“My Struggle III”), computer simulations (“This”), perceptions through multiple personalities (“Plus One”), false memories (“Forehead Sweat”) and telepathic illusions (“Ghouli”).

**

In terms of the downfall of THE X-FILES as a cultural force — this is strictly my opinion, but Seasons 2 - 5 were the height of the show in terms of ratings. After the movie, the ratings started to fall. My suspicion is that the Mulder/Scully case-of-the-week format with occasional myth-arc episodes was effective for five years. After five seasons, however, the audience craved a new take. FIGHT THE FUTURE suggested that there would indeed be a new emphasis on the Mulder-Scully relationship and the myth-arc where Seasons 1 -  5 hadn’t really done character arcs or developed the myth-arc all that much.

Season 6, however, didn’t deliver. There was a lot of teasing for both the Mulder-Scully relationship and the myth-arc, but there was nothing concerete. The romcom episodes came to an end without any real changes. The “Two Fathers”/One Son” revealed the mythology and killed off the Syndicate, but the aliens were still coming and the Smoking Man carried on his plotting, so nothing had really changed. Speculatively, I wonder if “Two Fathers”/“One Son” made it clear that both the relationship and the myth-arc would only ever be teases and doubletalk and the audience gave up.

Later shows like HOUSE and BUFFY were careful: each season had a year-long myth-arc that would be resolved by the season’s end. Each year also had some revisions to the format. As David Shore (HOUSE) would remark, you want to be making little changes to the show before the audience starts asking for them as opposed to after they’ve gotten bored — and you maybe want to commit to the changes wholeheartedly instead of in the wishy-washy fashion THE X-FILES did. That said, Informant would not agree with commiting fully and totally to a Mulder-Scully romance...

Personally, I would have had FIGHT THE FUTURE be the climactic, widescreen action conclusion to the alien invasion arc — and it ends with the X-Files Division burned to the ground and Mulder and Scully banned from the FBI premises for life. Season 6 ends with Mulder working at a tabloid and Scully working at a blood bank — until the Lone Gunmen call. Frohike won the lottery. Frohike wants to expand the Lone Gunmen into a national enterprise of exploring paranormal events — and he wants to re-name the magazine THE X-FILES and he wants Mulder and Scully to be his lead investigators. Season 6 starts a more ensemble approach where it’s now Mulder, Scully, Langley, Frohike, Byers and then it widens to include Jeffrey Spender, Diana Fowley and then it turns out that Frohike didn’t actually win the lottery, but the Smoking Man staged it...

With Season 7, I would have THE X-FILES go global with Mulder and Scully mentoring trainees as a new generation of X-Files investigators. With Season 8, Mulder goes missing and we focus on Scully and the trainees. With Season 9, Gillian Anderson is at last released from her contract and the trainees take center stage, shepherded by FBI agents Reyes and Doggett who have been made liaisons as the FBI consult with the X-Files Magazine.

TV works best when the concept evolves a bit each year. THE X-FILES refused to grow. It’s still refusing to grow.

I sometimes think THE X-FILES might have been better as a low-rated, low-budgeted cult series that muddled along, always drawing in slightly more ad revenue than it cost to actually make it, supported by a legion of diehard fans and largely ignored by the general public. Like FRINGE! Like SUPERNATURAL! Except the fate of cult shows in the 90s was, well, pretty much what we saw with SLIDERS: a slow death by a thousand cuts with endless retooling and recasting until the fanbase was reduced to six people and the ending to the series was scripted by the fanbase's village mental patient (twice over).

Keep in mind, the streaming option is becoming more and more popular all the time. The normal ratings hardly seem relevant anymore. (and I say this as someone who fully understands why the ratings should drop like a rock)

Not bad this week. A standard X-File, with an interesting plot. Leaning a little much on the trope of the psycho US army dude in Vietnam, but adding a government conspiracy to explain it. The episode was shot well, and the characters were written well enough, for the most part. So yeah, not bad.

Question, going back to the politics of this season: these episodes take place shortly after My Struggle II, right? So we'd be in maybe April of 2016 by now? So there is no President Trump yet. I guess they're fudging the dates so they don't end up making a period piece when all is said and done, but this is a great reason why they shouldn't be doing political commentary.

Yeah, it's selfish writing, when the writer becomes more important than the characters or stories. (Which is not the same thing as setting out to tell a political or personal story in the first place)

Similarly, with the Arrowverse, we've seen them make references to Trump, but they've clearly established their own fictional presidents, so it makes no sense.